Five-fruit tray at traditional Lunar New Year

Hanoi (VNA) - Like most other nations in Asia, Vietnamese people welcome the New
Year according to the lunar calendar, and Tet Nguyen Dan (the lunar New Year
Day) has long become the biggest festival of the nation.

Among the
numerous offerings that are required to decorate ancestral altars during the
traditional New Year, a five-fruit tray is indispensable for each Vietnamese
family, which is a symbol of the wholeheartedness and filial piety of the
present generation towards their ancestors and the Genie of the Land.

Like other
popular rituals, the preparation of a five‑fruit tray for Tet has become an
established convention. During the few days just before Tet, the Vietnamese
begin to buy the necessary fruits for this purpose. A five‑fruit tray is
usually composed of a hand of green bananas, a ripe pomelo (or a Buddha's hand,
a shaddock), oranges, persimmons, sapodilla plums, a bunch of kumquat, and in
recent years, one can add mangoes and grapes from southern Vietnam, or apples
and pears from China. Although it is called a five‑fruit tray, it does not
necessarily contain exactly five kinds of fruit.

Arranging
fruits on the crimson, hourglass‑shaped wooden tray is really an art. One has
to combine the colours and shapes of the different fruits in arranging them on
the tray to make it look like a still life picture.

To ensure
balance on the tray, the hand of bananas is usually put in the middle with the
bananas pointing upright and the pomelo on the concave surface of the hand of
bananas. Then the oranges, sapodilla plums, apples are added in the gaps
between the bananas and the pomelo.

The last little
gaps are filled in with little kumquats to create a full, compact tray of
fruits. In colours, the fruit‑tray presents a harmonious combination of the
different colours of fruits: dark green of banana, light yellow of pomelo, deep
red of persimmon, reddish yellow of orange and kumquat, light green of apple,
and dark brown of sapodilla plum. To complete the picture, the fruit tray will
be covered here and there with some small, fresh leaves of kumquat.

The five-fruit tray, together with horizontal lacquered
boards engraved with Chinese characters, parallel sentences written on red
paper, ornamental kumquat and peach trees, and popular Hang Trong and Dong Ho
pictures, has transcended its material value to become a spiritual symbol, an
original national product in the spiritual life of the Vietnamese.

At present, while many of the ancient spiritual values
have sunk into oblivion, the custom of arranging the five‑fruit tray on the
altar during the lunar New Year days is being jealously preserved as a fine
legacy of Vietnam's traditional culture.-VNA